3D Printed Molds For Resin Casting - Does That Even Work?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 พ.ค. 2022
- No silicone in sight! Just resin printed molds for resin casting.
Thanks to Elegoo for providing the Mars 2 printer.
Check it out at:
www.elegoo.com/products/elego...
Also thanks to Starbond for providing the Thin CA adhesive used in this video.
www.starbond.com
Here is a list of suppliers for many of the materials I use in my videos:
www.dropbox.com/s/kz6mhmf7v5v...
Do you have a project to suggest for the channel?
Here’s a .pdf with everything you need to know:
www.dropbox.com/s/pjb0l6fr7zj... - แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
ohhhhhhhhhh heck yes! Did you make this for me? I feel like this was made for me... I will pretend this was made for me. Always looking forward to your videos!
Nobody cares about you. Go back to your cave.
Love to see you printing molds on your channel Uncle Jessy!
We've recently started using a fleixble 3d printable rubber at work and have had success using it to cast silicone parts for product design students - I'll be messing with it over the next few weeks to see how else we can use it in teaching sculpture, and resin moulding for fine parts if on my list
Flexible printed molds are on the agenda. Should be fun!
Actually, this would be much easier and safer too
What brand do you use? I use water washable, but this would be incredible for simpler molds I wanted to make
@@RobertTolone Ive had reasonable success with simple elegoo water washable transparent green, its got a bit of flex in it, not glass hard like the grey. I have also been printing molds and trying to case silicone parts. I found that the resin seems to prevent the silicon from curing, I had to get some tin cure, which was not as tough as needed.
@@NicoleHam we're using a highly flexible resin rubber from formlabs.
What you could do is print up a version of your mould with the positive of your object, and make a silicone mold from it. And cast that.
💯💪🏼🔥
Literally what I'm looking to do, and why I'm here.
I guess the whole point of this video was to see if this step can be avoided.
I was thinking the exact same thing, Good call! 👍🏻👍🏻
Be aware, that silicone, especially the platinum based one, doesn't cure well around photoresin parts. It's called the inhibitor effect. The workaround is to use cheaper tin based silicone to make a pre-production die, cast a epoxy part in it, then use it as the original for the production dies.
never thought about printing molds, gotta try that out soon. Love to see the passion in the craft.
Amazing work Robert, I started modeling and figuring this all out a couple years ago. Awesome to see you evolve your processes using a 3d printer and sharing your experiences !
I love watching this man, he always looks genuinely happy on his lil projects
I like the way these molds are made. Thanks for you input and showing us.
Can't tell you how much I LOVE this little robot. So cute!!
Awesome! Glad to see you are working with the 3D printer. I’ve been thinking about printing a mold and this will prove very helpful. And I’m working on my own 3D robot as well. Love your PullBot design. Hope all is well with you. See you next Friday!
Wonderful! You just keep cranking out relevant videos relevant for my prototyping.
I’m going try this! I’ve been 3D printing the part and making a rubber cut mold from it. Which I learned from watching your amazing videos.
My friend was talking about your video yesterday, and I didn’t believe him. This is awesome, I’m going to try this too.
0.025 or 0.05mm tolerance works like a charm with mold locking spheres. Great video as always 😃
Good to know, thanks. Zero tolerance was obviously not the way to go!
I also always use .06 to .08 mm clearance for mating parts.
@@RobertTolone You can use 0 Tolerance but at least activate Anti-Aliasing in Chitubox ( If u use it ). The AA will take a few pixels to blur them, so they will leave a tiny gap. I personally use 0.030mm of tolerance. Great Video btw.
All these measurements depend on the materials used. Some resins shrink considerably as they cure. Though this property is unpopular in 3D printing or casting.
@@asailijhijr
In addition, they shrink differently depending on the geometry of the print. For example, a pin may shrink and become thinner and vice versa - the print around the hole may shrink and the hole will become larger. It depends on the wall thickness, the geometry and even the curvature of the surface.
Rob! Love your videos! You tell it like it is in this casting world! Like you say it's to make you happy!
Robert. You are a real class act. I mean that with utmost sincerity. I can't wait to dig in to your channel. I've been curious about this sort of thing for a long time. 👍Best!
This used to only be possible in an industiral setting and now we are doing it at home. Pretty cool!
When a friend's making resin moulds, he prints the positive on a resin printer, then casts a silicon mould around it. It's soft enough to make part extraction a lot easier, but stiff enough to keep its shape.
I do this as well. I Have some resin mold jackets that i've made for things I commonly cast and printed mold to cast silicone molds to do resin casts. If that isn't too convoluted :P
if the mold are empty he loses the shape, here on brazil we use "gesso" idk the translation name of this
@@victorgomes5823 they call it plaster
Great experiments, Robert!
Glad to see someone my age have as much fun with this kind of hobby as I do.
Nice job, always a pleasure to see a new video.
Great teaching! I don’t think I’ll ever forget what PULL means in this context.
i do this for work and modeling for molds, there are so many things to think about. this is a good video.
Really cool project. Enjoyed your video. Looking forward to watching more of your content.
love the work and your explanation of the PullBot
Hey, great work! I stumbled across wanting to learn more about casting with the possibility of 3d printing. Very informative and love your passion and enthusiasm.
Very nice! Blender is amazing - it's hard to believe it's completely free and open source.
This is really cool stuff. Great video. Thanks for the upload.
It's so relaxing to hear Martin Sheen doing 3D modeling and printing XD, amazing work!!! thanks for sharing...
Young man. That was pretty cool. Thanks for sharing.
thank you for making this video, nice lunchtime viewing!
Cool! I just had this recommended to me while I am currently printing a mold for resin lol. Glad there is hope! I am using it to make a house key so hopefully the details won't be ruined if I don't have a pressure/vacuum chamber.
excellent work Robert!!!
Draft release angles make a huge difference, I made production parts using a form 3 printer and resin casting with mine, apply similar principles for this as you do for injection mould designs.
first video and i already love this dude. keep it up bro
That's a clean model. Good video, too. Props, good Sir
Thank you! This explains the process perfectly!
Found a cool new channel with a nice chill dude!
Just stumbled onto this video. Thank you for sharing your project.
He *did come out pretty cute! ☺ Nice little resin figure guy! This looks like so much fun!
Been waiting for something like this....I think I'll give it a shot now!
I've been experimenting with this exact same thing recently, trying to make custom silicone o-rings for a project. I settled on printing the mold with no registration keys, just divots to help me locate them later. This way I can sand the mold faces flat on a granite surface plate to ensure they come together perfectly for minimal flash. Then I drill out the divots to .25" and add two metal pins for registration. I've also found that smooth-on mold max 30 doesn't have any inhibition problems when used directly against syratech blu resin, which is also pretty tough and not very brittle.
@@PeppoMusic Well, I've only made a few, I'm still tweaking the mould design, but I don't know if the mould will ever wear out. If I'm pulling silicone parts out of a resin mould, it should last indefinitely, shouldn't it? I guess we'll see😄
You have a great voice and your content starts IMMEDIATELY. I really appreciate that you waste no time. You earned a sub from me. Thanks for the content!
Me too, I like videos that dive right in! Thanks for subbing!
I have to say i am immensly impressed by this Video and yourself sir.
As soon as i heard that you modelled it up yourself in blender i subbed! Its amazing and an Inspiration. My Blender experience was very humbling as it is not very easy to understand i think. Keep it up
I have struggled to learn Blender but I’m finally getting comfortable with the modeling part. Animation, procedurals, nodes, Uvs, etc I haven’t even started on yet.
Oh wow! I've always wanted to try home casting for my ball jointed dolls that I also print out on my 3D printer, this might be a game changer for me!
Thanks Rob! always wanted to try this, now I know how!
It was nice to see a bit of you working in blender. I spend a lot of time in it myself for both my casting project and my animations. I never knew there was a 'bool tool' addon. I always just used the boolean modifier in the same spot you find the subdivision surface modifier.
My Blender knowledge is pretty limited. I use it almost entirely for toy prototype models.
Thank you for this video! He's super cute and have learned a lot so far
pour one out for the broken mold! Great experiment, especially accounting for no undercuts or places for it to get stuck. Zero forgiveness compared to silicone seems like!
Hey Brookes! Yeah, it was a fun experiment. I think it could be refined to work a lot better.
@@RobertTolone those draft angles are always a challenge too. I might start designing my components with chamfers so that I'll never have to worry about air entrapment and sharp corners causing the mold to get stuck
They have more flexible resins and I believe you can mix and match so that might be one way to make things a little better.
I actually got my resin printer to make moulds, but not like this, I actually plan to make moulds for silicon moulds for resin casting.
@@myopinion69420 hmmm 🤔 one of my thoughts was to make the mould with the part joined to it using a union (boolean) operation and cast the negative if it's a one piece mould
Very cool proof of concept there!
Geesh....your approach always makes so much sense. I've been printing and molding for a while but tilt the mold so air escapes. You tilted the cavity = brilliant!
Mold cavity position is super important!
@@RobertTolone Different printers/resins might give different results, I have a better fit when the registration keys are downsized by .1mm diameter. Your videos have helped me a lot. Thanks for that. For anyone watching (Robert already knows I'm sure), it's easier to make a silicone mold from the prints than to cast in a resin print. Usually, Tin cure works well. I haven't had any luck using platinum cure silicones.
That's a tough material combo to mold: rigid on rigid. You were smart to use a base layer of wax on top of a spray release. Most folks miss this part. You really need a good wax base (2-3 coats is ideal) to ensure you don't have reactivity between the UV cured resin and the polyurethane. The spray release then helps get it out the rest of the way. We've done a couple videos on 3D printed molds on our YT channel, as it's a frequent request/question, so nice work on showing the success and pitfalls!
⁹9⁹o 99999999⁹99999999999999⁹9999
Really well done video. Not super into 3D printing, but I loved the quality of your blender designs. Audio & Video are crisp which is great.
Keep it up!
I will try Alex, thanks!
great video, thanks for sharing your knowledge!
Great vid Robert, thanks for uploading!
Thanks Charles!
I didn't think of the possibility to print molds. Nice to see how you did it.
It was a first go so hopefully I’ll get better at it!
Your channel is wildly good
Welcome to the world PullBot!
Luv your show!
i had to comment early before I even finished the video. I am so frigging thankful for your insight and your videos. You explain shop tools and terms so easily, I would have never seen myself casting, using PU rubber, dying, and actually owning a pressure pot not even 2 months ago. So THANK YOU!
I'm also really glad you're breaking down the 'pull' concept, Its one of my biggest issues when I model. I don't know much about casting, so Im always running into issues when I finally get to the cast/pull phase. Like YESTERDAY I finally finished a big mold for a toy I'm making with big pointy teeth, but you explaining the 'pull' direction is 100% why those darn teeth get stuck when I pull out my cast. So thanks again!!! I will try to improve my orientations.... and now I continue the video!
Glad you find my videos helpful Nicole. I wish you great success your projects!
Omg, I've been meaning to try this. I wanted to make something and then make a mold of it, I just haven't gotten round to trying it yet.
This is one of those reasons to get a resin printer, unfortunately I've only got an FDM printer. I'm so glad someone else tried this. :O
Awesome video! You're a cool cat, Robert
You can include tiny air channels into the mold that can then be used with compressed air to just blow the parts out. Just remember to plug up the holes with some beeswax before casting.
That or chill the project, mold and all, for about 5 to 10 minutes in the ice box. The material difference between your mold and print medium should cause them to thermally expand at different rates. Easy pop out then.
@@jacksonfondren1656 or into hot water after is is hardened inside - should work too
idk how you appeared on my newsfeed but this was interesting! You would be an awesome uncle to have!
I was thinking about this recently and this video came at the perfect time lol
Im super interested in trying this since getting molds to do what I want are adding up, 6$ here 9$ there 4$ over there, it adds up fast and Ive yet to find something Im happy with at a price I can live with, so printing something even if its single use sounds really REALLY handy, thank you for covering this subject
You are fantastic thank you, truly inspiring
I have to say I too prefer the casting resin over 3D resin printing. The results are night and day. however, there are things you can't cast, unless you are a true artist with nerves of steel, sometimes you have no choice to 3D resin print objects no casting would accomplish. Great video, thank you.
at my previous job we 3d printed mold for injection molding, and we managed to make very complex plastic parts runs of about 25 units per mold, which was really neat. It really accelerated the prototyping process for us
hello, how many times could you use 3d printed molds with injection molding? thanks :)
@@mertturan2986 about 25units per mold, depends on the plastic you're injecting though. Some require higher pressure, or tougher to release from the mold. There's a lot to factor in, it's a lot of trial and error
Sweet! The ability to make a real fast mold with ver partial infill (making it really fragile) with which a completely solid infill resin of a different and tougher plastic is a real accomplishment. I can see using this to make really intricate really tough and hard plastic gears. I would still use pins and make them the right size. This was a real success.
It's quicker to make a silicone mould.
9:28 on the Time-Line: Quote of the Video: "...oh good... I glued that on there good... well, isn't that 'special'..." LOL!!!! Thanks for the leaving these bits in LOL!!!!
😄
Smooth on has some stuff that fills the lines on 3 -D printed molds . Thanks for this video enjoyed very much .
you can even injection mold with 3d printed resin tooling, its a little tricky but when you have the process down its a great way to rapidly test out tooling geometry before machining final tooling in aluminum or steel
Hey Robert I make 3D printed injection molds for fishing lures over on my channel and found the best way to align and hold them is to use nuts and bolts, I have a few videos on my channel outlining how I do it. Great videos as always, I have learned so much from your videos!
Yup I could see myself just drilling holes in the modelling
Where can I get 3D mold files
OHHHH! THATS SMART!!!
@@AdamMclardy No need to drill, just add them to your mold halves before printing. I have a motto, drilling = failure when it comes to 3D printing. 😄
Thank you for making this
I'd like to see a few more of these 3d printing mold vids
One heck of a creator and craftsman
I just finished my own 3D printed resin casting mold test as well only 1 hour ago! The 3D model of the mold I made does not close as a flat surface but more of a sinusoidal shape. My first attempt was very unsatisfactory because the two halves did not fit together well. I tested out the resin I was using using a validation test and set the exposure time accordingly. The two halves then fitted perfectly. I tested it out with sanitary silicone, no injecting, just some dishwasher to prevent the silicone from sticking and then pressed the two halves together. Worked incredibly well. When casting silicone you don't have to worry about the shape locking the mold when it hardens. I also recommend using a clear resin for the molds because you can check to see if the casting material filled it up properly. Thank you for your videos, Mr. Tolone. They helped me out a lot.
Great tips, thanks!
Such a great and kind man!! Thank you for your video!!!! =)
That's not a toy...it's a work of art. Unique and custom from start to finish. You need to start a "Creations Gallery." Thanks for the cool and inspiring piece RT!
Thanks! I appreciate it.
I am actually surprised not at your casting, but your 3D sculpting. Just wow!
I am primarily a sculptor. It’s funny to me that I am known as a moldmaker on TH-cam.
@@RobertTolone Well, your contents are mostly about casting, so... XD
I imagine it would be possible to make the seam line in almost any shape, it might make it even easier to fit them together, for the final part to be removed and it would also look cool
If you use a rubbery resin like SuperFlex you can print a rubber mold
which will make release of models much easier and even allow for minor undercuts
Nice work !
Awesome experiment, my favorite thing about this is how time effective this process is. I do have one question : do you have to reapply beeswax every time you go to use the molds? I've only ever used Ease Release, this is a method of mold release is new to me.
For me it doesn't seem to matter how long a resin print cures for, how many coats of ease release I use or layers of clear coat spray paint I do; I can't get a resin print to cure with the preferred platinum cure silicone. Sure I could use tin cure silicone, but with the fragility of tin cure silicone, if that breaks, it costs more time and energy to make new one. ESPECIALLY if it's a two part mold.
So even if I can get one clean cast out of a resin printed mold and it breaks, I can then make a platinum cure mold and be happy.
Instantly subscribed, you are awesome!
Thanks!
print your pins separate from the molds with both mold having negative for the pins, nice video!!
I love the Asaro head as focus dummy at the end!
I was his student when he designed that head. I bought it from him. It was a pre-production test casting and the ears didn’t cast correctly so it is flawed. John didn’t want to sell it to me but I insisted. It’s been in my studio ever since.
@@RobertTolone No way! That's so cool!
I want to experiment using 3D parts as a mold and the outside surface of the part at the same time, printing FDM in vase mode like and filling it with resin in order to get a strong part. Thanks for sharing your experiment, I really appreciate watching it.
Thoroughly enjoyed this episode! Dealing with similar things now in my unrelenting desire to make plastic figures. :D
As you experienced, resin 3D prints are *not* accurate. I switched from Chitubox to Lychee and that somehow made a difference, but with injection molds I still generally will have to sand a while before the mold halves fit together. SUPER impressed with the figure design! It's like you've been doing 3D/computer design for decades!
Love you and your work Mr Crafsman. Awright. 😁😇
As with FDM printers you can do some adjustments of settings to make it very close to having a prefect accuracy.
My resin printer gives me close to 0.0X accuracy but i also spend a lot of time getting my settings just right. it of course also comes down to the resin that you use, it can shrink, expand or even deform when curing.
I had no problems making 2 half's of a mold that merged perfectly to form thin aluminum from a can.
Uh, actually, Crafsman I HAVE been doing computer design since Windows 3.1 I first started using 3d CAD for doing StarWars spaceships, etc for Kid’s meal toys back in the late 90’s. Most of my sculpting has been by hand, but still, I feel like I should be a lot more advanced as a 3-D modeler than I am! I have switched entirely to Blender and it is my goal to become professionally proficient with it this year. And the experience of printing my characters in house has just begun. Over the years I always sent the models out to service bureaus for printing. Back in the 90’s it would cost $1,200 to print a small character! This little $200 Elegoo printer makes prints far superior to those old prints! We always had to re-cast the 3-D print into sculpting wax to clean up all the layer lines. Will definitely look in to Lychee and hope that my printing skills come up to par as well.
@Robert Tolone WHAAAAAT?!? I must have missed the episode where you talked about your legendary past! :D Blender is the one to learn, by the way. I was hung up on my 3D software of choice (started using trueSpace 2 in 1998) and have downloaded Blender every couple of years with the intention of learning it. I've also recently taken some ACTION towards that with my latest download of Blender and some inspiration from Ian Hubert's videos.
You're continually impressing me, sir.
@@TheCrafsMan I found Blender hard to learn because I have been using Rhino NURBS modeling forever. I couldn’t get the workflow and muscle memory out of my head. Polygons are so different than NURBS surfaces! But I am blown away by all the things that Blender can do and I’m getting better at it every day. Now that I have the basics of the Blender-to-3D printing process in hand it will open up a huge new world of possibilities.
Great video. Thanks!
Coming from a time where all of my casting moulds were hand built, using dental amalgams, plasters, resins, etc, using my printer to build moulds has opened an entirely new world of possibilities. Forget 2 part moulds - with a 3d printer you can break a mould into multiple sections with varying angles and make pulls that were impossible to accomplish, with any mould medium.
No idea how TH-cam suggested this to me, but man this is awesome! I tried this with some siraya high temp stuff trying to cast pewter. Didn't quite work, but this makes me consider the wax for release.
Great video. I was wondering if I can use a 3D printer to make molds for pen blanks? I saw you can put them in a pressure pot.
There are additives that you can mix with the resin (usually 1:3 or 1:4 by volume) that give the print some flexibility which allows you to break the microscopic hold the parts have on the mold even on drafted parts. It is also possible (depending on design) to add ejectors to the mold that would need plugged or to add chamfers to the outside mold seams to ease mechanical separation. Also also, again depending on the design, it is about just as easy to print the molds in multiple parts beyond 2 so that it is easier to get hold of the part and separate everything limiting the surface area any particular mold section has. I used all of these techniques to print a 5 part mold (with 6 steel registration pins) to cast game pieces that could not have draft. They had detailed engraving on top and bottom and then they had sharp, square edges to be able to stand on any of their three edges. I added chamfers dividing the layers of the sandwich so to speak that would wedge the top and bottom sections away from the ring of middle sections, then I printed double pronged clips that I could put on my vice jaws to easily break away the large upper and lowers before easily peeling off the middle pieces. Since all seams are at the edges of the rather angular piece the flashing is easily cleaned and fixed. This was repeated for three patterns of engraving as well as adapted to make a squish mold for polymer clay and spray foam.
You can buy flexible 3d printer resin, no need to mix your own
@@Aikano9 no good, they become toooo flexible. You just need something that allows the mix be less brittle while still keeping dimensional tolerances. If you look at the instructions of those flexible resins they recommend different mix ratios on them.
Edit: Depending on what is being molded of course. There could be reasons for more flex in some situations but I've not found a situation in which I wanted to use the full soft resin.
PS: your comment was really condescending. I recommended adding flexible resin to hard resin to make the hard resin more flexible and you come back with 'hey you can buy flexible resin' like dude I literally just said that.
@@karatos I read the first sentence. Not the rest. Idk if you mentioned buying flexible resins or not
@@Aikano9 The existence and use of flexible resins, the main point of the comment, was literally the first sentence, so even that excuse is lame.
To others, my apologies, I did not explicitly state that these products were for sale, since I did not think that detail was in any way needed amongst thinking adults, but since at least one person did not understand please allow me to be clear: one can buy these, readily, and often at reasonable cost from reputable dealers. No need to steal them or excrete them or synthesize them yourself. If you needed this information then I wish you the best of luck and try not to look up because it might be raining.
I just underwent this experiment myself, made an almost identical mold type and also had the same issue of it not closing flush, only I don’t think the problem was the registration marks, rather the print was warped possibly due to being underexposed, I think i need to dial in the resin exposure settings in the slicer to get the perfect fit. So I’m going back to testing some resin calibration prints to fix this.
The roughness in your prints is most likely from the tiny layers that resin printers use, if you look at a part 3d printed from a traditional fdm 3d printer, you will notice a lot of stepping and layers, resin printers do the the same thing, just on a smaller scale, it's always a good idea to sand 3d prints.
A good idea for the pieces to come out easily would be to sand and polish the molds first, because the matte finish on 3d printed parts comes from the micro stair steppping from the different layers, so that may increase the surface area a lot and the resin will stick a lot more
Or you can spray with polyeurathane to get a smooth finish after a few coats and fill in the gaps.
@@GaryMcKinnonUFO Yeah, that should work too. I spray regular gloss spray, but you still ned to buff it. Haven't tried with polyurethane or 2K finishes, but for some parts it looks very good after just sanding and polishing, which sometimes can be even faster because you don't need to wait for the paint to dry
@@smokeduv Good point about drying time.
Yet another fun video with a funny cool result.
Thanks Brian!
this will be pretty neat done in tpu, many thanks for the video, I'll try my hand at making a mold too.
Yes, Flexible molds are the logical next step and should be a lot of fun.
🔥 we use air gun to get castings from hard molds in my Uni!. Great video!
Very cool. I always imagined making the print than making the print into a mold. But I guess you can go straight to making the mold it's self